Topic outline

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    CAP Basics badgeThis course provides an overview of CAP: the benefits for using it; the technology behind it; examples of tools for issuing CAP alerts; and examples of CAP-based alert hubs.

  • Introduction

    What happens when your hazardous weather alerts go out to the public? How widely are they distributed to the people in the impact zones? What can your organization do to make your alerts easily accessible to the public, the media, online venues, and alerting systems?

  • How to Take This Course

    This 1.5-2 hour, self-directed course is offered through the WMO Education and Training (ETR) programme's course site. All resources, assignments, and assessments are available on this site. Review the following topics to learn how to best participate and successfully complete this course. 

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    • Read the Course Guide for information on how to complete this course:

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      Course Guide Page

    • Do you have questions about the course? Having problems using or accessing lessons or activities? Use this forum to post your questions or concerns. A member of the WMO ETR Office will get back to you with a response.

    • The Announcement forum is used by the course organizers to post information on updates to the course and to share activities related to CAP implementation. As an enrolled participant in the course, you will receive email notifications for new postings.

  • When an emergency is in the forecast...

    ...alerts need to go out to the public as quickly and as efficiently as possible. The better people are informed about a hazard threat or emergency, the more lives can be saved and resources preserved. And the more targeted the alerts are, the more people in harms way are confident the message is intended precisely for them. CAP is designed to precisely identify the alerting area and to communicate quickly and easily through any communications media, using a format that is universally readable.

  • CAP 101: An Overview of the Common Alerting Protocol

    The following six lessons step through parts of a presentation given by Eliot Christian at a 2018 workshop held at Centro Regional de Formación Argentina. Eliot highlights the key reasons for implementing CAP, describes how it works, and showcases examples of how it is being used. Within each lesson, you will watch segments of Eliot's recorded presentation, answer questions, and be directed to visit and explore CAP related resources. 

    Before beginning the lessons, you may want to download the following two files.